Rivermen hire coach

Davis Payne has built a reputation as a winner during his coaching career.

Dave Eminian

Davis Payne has built a reputation as a winner during his coaching career.

Now he's sealed his biggest victory yet.

The St. Louis Blues have signed Payne to be the next head coach of the Peoria Rivermen, according to sources in the NHL and AHL on Monday.

The Blues, parent club of the AHL's Rivermen, are believed to be planning to announce the deal today.

His career has been on a fast track since leading the Blues' class-AA farm club, Alaska, to the ECHL's Kelly Cup in 2005-06.

Payne took Alaska to the conference finals three straight seasons, only the second coach to do so in ECHL history. He was ECHL Coach of the Year in 2006-07, and his 50 playoff wins are second-most by any coach in ECHL history.

He has never had a losing season as a head coach.

Payne, one of the finalists for the Rivermen head coaching job that eventually went to Dave Baseggio in 2006-07, was elevated to the AHL as an assistant coach for the Rivermen last season.

The Blues fired Baseggio in April after Peoria missed the playoffs under the coach for a second straight season.

Payne, who many believed was hired as an assistant to be groomed as Peoria's next head coach anyway, moved up Monday into the lead role ahead of schedule.

It will be a young, rising coach leading what is expected to be a young, rebuilding Rivermen team.

Payne connected with St. Louis' young prospects last season in Peoria, especially reaching highly-skilled, but undeveloped Russian rookie Nikolay Lemtyugov in his first year in North America.

The coach contacted Lemtyugov's old team in Russia, downloaded videotapes of the player in action in Europe, all for the purpose of understanding what the player had been taught and how he understood and approached the game.

The Blues noticed.

Now with a bigger stake in the Rivermen than ever before - the Blues parent company, SCP Worldwide bought the Peoria franchise last week and now is responsible for its bottom line - St. Louis wants to develop players and build a winner in Peoria.

The Michigan Tech product spent nine seasons as a forward in the pros, including 22 NHL games with Boston in 1995-96 and 1996-97.

He played 277 games in the ECHL for Greensboro and Greenville, 81 more in the old IHL for Phoenix and San Antonio, and 122 games in the AHL for Providence and Rochester.

That gave him an understanding of all three minor-league levels in the game.

He made his head coaching debut in 2000-2001 with ECHL Pee Dee, taking over at mid-season and turning in a 23-16-5 record. His Pee Dee teams reached 41 and 40 wins, respectively, over the next two years on the ECHL's 72-game schedule.

He moved on to Alaska, and built a powerful club that won 45, 53 and 49 games, respectively, in his last three years there.